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If we are to make an impact on our ecological foot print and determine if we are developing sustainably, I believe we need to change the way we evaluate the economics of our development projects.
For example when we look at resource development, we traditionally take into account the costs to extract the resource,the processing costs, the manafacturing costs, the transportation cost and the cost to deliver the resource to the consumer. The analysis of the revenue and the costs (ie the cash flow) determine the economic return and the value of the project.
What does not get factored into this analysis is the cost of the water resources we use, the impact the emissions have on climate and human health, the impact on the land, the impact on the community etc. Our traditional economic analysis does not recognize a cost of using these limited resources or the future impact of consuming them when we evaluate the feasibility of a resource development project.
If these costs were added to the economic analysis would it change the decision on the development of the project? If we also factored these socio/enviromnental costs in would it allow us to make a more informed choices when evaluating projects and their sustainablity?